11 Best Matt Haig Books

Nora Seed, crushed by regret and convinced she has nothing to live for, steps into a magical library between life and death where each book lets her try a different version of her life and decide whether she truly wants to die.

Tom Hazard looks forty but has been alive for centuries, quietly changing identities under the control of a secret society that forbids its members to fall in love; when he becomes a history teacher in modern London, that rule grows impossible to follow.

Part memoir, part manual, this book charts Matt Haig’s plunge into life‑threatening depression in his twenties and his slow recovery, offering short chapters, lists and honest conversations aimed at anyone who has ever struggled to see a reason to go on.

An alien from a hyper‑rational civilisation takes over the body of mathematician Andrew Martin to erase a dangerous discovery, but as he lives among Martin’s wife, son and dog, he begins to fall in love with messy, irrational human life.

A patchwork of very short reflections, stories, quotes and reminders written for days when everything feels too much, this book gathers ideas that helped Haig through his own dark times and offers gentle, non‑preachy reassurance that feelings can change.

Grace, a widowed former maths teacher numbed by grief, unexpectedly inherits a crumbling house on Ibiza from a woman she barely knew and, after encountering a mysterious light in the sea, finds herself gifted with strange abilities and a second chance at living.

Eleven‑year‑old Nikolas, nicknamed Christmas, leaves his poor but loving home in Finland to search for his missing father and the legendary elf village of Elfhelm, discovering flying reindeer, talking mice and the beginnings of the Christmas spirit.

Drawing on his own experience of anxiety, Haig explores how news cycles, smartphones, social media and modern busyness can overwhelm us, then offers simple, practical ways to slow down, protect your mind and build a kinder relationship with the world.

In a quiet English village, Peter and Helen Radley have hidden the fact that they are abstaining vampires, even from their own teenagers, until a violent incident forces the family to confront bloodlust, lies and the cost of denying who they are.

Amelia Wishart once supplied the hope that powered Father Christmas’s first magical journey, but now she is trapped in a grim Victorian workhouse and losing faith, forcing Father Christmas to repair Elfhelm and race to London before Christmas magic dies out.

Set in the world of The Midnight Library, this novel follows Wilbur, a lonely man whose best memories are of his lost love Maggie and their honeymoon in Venice, as a magical train offers him the chance to revisit the past at a dangerous cost.